Product managers, stop being jaded

2024 is here. After layoffs, changes in company’ direction and a tight job market in tech, a lot of product managers are exhausted and not feeling motivated by their work. And it’s not helping their careers, sense of identity or mental health.

I recently met a group of product friends who work in big tech and well-known startups and they were all complaining about their jobs – all folks who five years earlier were falling over themselves to get a product management job.

Below, I’ve constructed some archetypes of jaded product managers. I’ve also got some ideas  for how to move forward if you think one of these archetypes could be you.

I don’t do anything of value

In your world view, you do optics, coordination, tactical tasks and updates.

The good thing about being a product manager is that your role is varied, so you have some flexibility. Pick the right areas of focus for yourself to deliver the value the company needs. Need to find customer insights in the data or determine the right KPIs? Spend more time with your data science team. Want to learn more about the customer? Read customer contacts or speak with them yourself. Want to spend more time on strategy? Read more about the industry, or get in touch with the people in your company who do market research and strategy. Align the messaging with your team goals, e.g. “I am trying to determine the largest pain points for the customer or our next biggest opportunity, so I am doing XYZ.”

Delegate to free up time. Could your engineering team do certain things independently when previously they relied on you to help? Could you just be on speed dial for help on that bug instead of being in the “war room” the whole time? Could you ask for a program manager to coordinate all the moving pieces of a highly cross-functional project? The product manager needs to be building the future of the product, they cannot do that if they spend all their time in the present. Don’t be shy to advocate for freeing up your time to focus on higher leverage tasks. If it is a type of project you’ve done before, would a more junior product manager on the team want this opportunity?

Note: This approach may be more valid for senior product managers and above. Also in certain companies, there are strong norms for PMs to do certain things. Know those and don’t skip on them.

I’m bored

This is code for I am not learning anything new or I am not being challenged in my work. Maybe you’ve been working on the same product or types of initiatives for a while.

Could you pitch a new strategy or project/initiative? Could you help another product leader in a project adjacent to your space? If you know what leadership is noodling on for the next strategy, could you put your hand up for that? The key here is to get specific. If you simply tell your manager that you want more responsibility or projects without defining what types of opportunities you want, you may end up with something you don’t like.

I have too much accountability

You have accountability to move certain KPIs or projects, but no control over them.

This often occurs when you rely on other product management/engineering/design squads or cross-functional teams like sales/marketing to drive outcomes. We’ve all heard the term influence without authority to no end. But the reality is that sometimes the incentives or goals of your cross-functional partners aren’t aligned with your goals. And no amount of influence at your level may change that.

Don’t see this as a personal failure but do call out the misalignment. Tell your leadership that things are not moving in spite of your best efforts. Tell them in advance that team misalignment will lead to misses in timelines and goals.

If you are the product leader, can you bring others along on the accountability journey? Advocate for the same goals or at least overlapping goals with other teams or cross-functional teams. Align with your cross-functional peers on these projects and goals. Is there a quid pro quo here – something they need from you? Note that this may be work done by your team, certain expertise or credit for helping with the most important company priorities. If it still does not work, you have to call it out to your leadership. There may be certain roles missing in the organization, so you’re not able to convince any team to take on certain responsibilities. Make a recommendation, but call out that someone needs to adjudicate common ground for teams.

I have too much responsibility

You have too many tasks and projects. You feel your company does not prioritize well and wants everything done.

One strategy is to prioritize them yourself and share your prioritization with your manager. Don’t be afraid to drop projects that become less important if the company context/goals change or if the project is not going to have the desired outcome you once thought. Communicate the drop and your comprehensive rationale. Have a no-list or a back-burner-list and communicate these along with the rationale. Try to bring the focus back on the yes-list, and why those are the strongest projects for that list. If you’re being asked to juggle a broad range of things, make your leaders aware of the trade-offs, “The last time we tried to do this, we ended up with a few issues and incidents. I am not confident of the team being able to parallel track or shorten the timeframe for these with the quality we desire.”

Also refer to prior paragraphs for tips on delegation. As a plus, these approaches also help you appear more strategic and take on and manage a bigger scope of or more complex problems.

Lastly, if all these items are important, is this an opportunity to hire another product manager? Or are there aspiring product managers in the organization who would really want opportunities to work part-time on product management projects?

There is too much politics

When people say this, they believe that the self-interest of certain people is being pursued over the common good or good of the company.

This may be deeply entrenched, soul-sucking or a symptom of too many people chasing too few opportunities. If your leaders are not shutting these instances down or are themselves playing politics to your detriment, you may want to think about moving teams or companies.

You have to be politically aware and savvy, there are no two ways about it. Ever been in a meeting wherein the driver could not get past a few slides without a lot of disagreement? There’s a good chance that they weren’t organizationally aware and did not anticipate the interests of the various parties. So product managers, the earlier you can start understanding the organizational and personal undercurrents, the more you can push your ideas and projects through. You can use various techniques – like communicating in concentric circles to get buy-in from people closest to you, pre-meetings, or even anticipating certain concerns and proactively addressing those. Of course, don’t forget to ask your manager to give you air cover or help to disentangle certain hairy situations.

For product leaders, this is probably an article in itself. In general, build relationships, focus on helping other leaders and even supporting them in more “public” scenarios. If there is a tussle for territory, try to get ahead of it by advocating for the space beforehand or starting some research or work in that whitespace to become the de facto owner of that space. If your team is being blamed for something, don’t cave to the finger pointing. State the facts if the blame is undeserved. Take ownership for the miss if it is deserved – make sure it’s not a reflection on the team but a specific gap, missing process etc. Focus on how to move forward and share the changes you’ve made.

The more you can reframe politics as an essential skill as opposed to something to avoid, the more effective you will be. Also, emotionally regulate. Passionate advocacy is great, anger or irritation can be seen as a lack of control and may create negative sentiment towards you, especially in larger meetings.

Closing thoughts

• Sometimes leaving a truly toxic manager, workplace, team is important. But in a tight job market where you don’t feel like you have the power anyway, trying to make changes to your current situation might get you a higher ROI.
• No one is going to help you – you have to help yourself. An exaggeration, but you need to apply the 5 whys to yourself. Why are you feeling a certain way? Why is it causing you to feel that way?
• Have a healthy distance from work. Your work is not your life. Your work does not define your identity and level of achievement. Do a good job and then shut off.